


happy holidays from the ryders’

by spacershepards



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Family Fluff, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 05:11:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10326284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacershepards/pseuds/spacershepards
Summary: if it’s your last hanukkah before you leave to go colonize another galaxy, the least you can do is have some fun.





	

**Author's Note:**

> literally just the ryder family and hanukkah (based on what I remember of hanukkah from when my family used to celebrate it.) since we don’t know if mom!ryder is dead or not, i’m simply assuming she’s dead. also: happy holidays to anyone reading this!

“I call dibs on top bunk!”

“Not fair.” Scott says, more like a five year old than an adult. Sara's already on the top bunk, though, looking down at her brother and sticking out her tongue. Ahh yes, responsible adults _adulting_. He makes a face. “You got the top bunk last year.”

“Your memory is impeccable,” Sara replies, dangling her legs over the bed and attempting to kick him in the head or something. Who knows at this point? “How old are you anyways? _Three_?”

He groans and tosses his duffel bag on the bottom bunk. “Ha, ha. That'd make _you_ three, too.”

“Three _and_ six minutes older than you, Scotty.”

“Can the two of you stop arguing?”  


Their father, Alec, appears in the doorway with an annoyed look on his face and his arms crossed over his reindeer sweater. “I already had to listen to the two of you argue over how to pronounce 'gif' for twenty minutes, I _don't_ want to hear you argue over how old you are.”

“Yeah, Scott, don't argue with me.” Sara's grinning down at them and Scott kinda wants to hit her (not hard, obviously, it's Hanukkah, that is in no way whatsoever a nice thing to do.)

Alec exits – _probably_ to unpack – and Scott lays down on the bottom bunk, staring at the metal planks. “Can you believe this'll be our last Hanukkah? Here, I mean.”

He can feel her shift above him, then brown hair falling off the edge of the bunk, a yelp, and he can see her face for a minute as she struggles not to fall off the bunk. He quickly sits up and leans over to help, but she's already pulled herself back up. “ _And_ our last Christmas, but yeah.”

“When have we _ever_ celebrated Christmas?” He almost apologizes after saying it because they used to, a long time ago, but they don’t anymore.  


“We _used_ to. When... you know, before...”

He knows what she's trying to say and cuts her off so she doesn't have to say it. “I guess we'll have to add a menorah to the list of things to take with us.”

“And dreidels. And, oh, chocolate coins... but I don't think those'll last five hundred years.” Then she's off the bed and smiling. She throws her arms into the air and stretches, then grabs her bright blue duffel and zips it open, pulling out a sweater and yanking it over her head.

He glances over at her, getting off the bed and pushing his duffel bag even farther to the back. “We should go help Dad with dinner.”

“It's only four,” she says, glancing at her watch. “That's nowhere near dinnertime.”

“Yeah, so? Maybe I'm hungry. Maybe the latkes are calling me.”

She groans, mindlessly pulling her hair back in a ponytail, and then shrugs. She pulls a hair tie off her wrist and finishes putting her hair back. “Okay. Fine. We might not ever have them again, so that's a good enough reason.”

“ _Come eat us, Sara... come cook us and eat us..._ ”

“Oh my God, Scott, shut up,” she says, and tries to swat at him. He's not as fast as her but he manages to move out of the way anyways, trying not to laugh in case she decides to come at him again. She could probably take him, if he's being honest.

“Okay, fine, no latkes for you.”

* * *

“ _It's for a Christmas card,_ ” Sara says, her attempt at imitating their dad... pretty good, actually, practically spot on. “I like wearing a sweater, I do! _These_ are just awful.”

“It's the last Christmas card we will ever send,” Scott says in an effort to sound ominous, but it doesn't really work, Sara knows him too well. Instead, she just groans and tugs at the bottom of the sweater. Then, in a last ditch effort to cheer her up, he laughs and gestures at the reindeer on his sweater, wearing a space helmet and flying through the most terribly stiched stars that he has ever seen. Hers is just a reindeer with a red nose, Rudolph or something. “At least you don't have mine.”

“Dad says _you_ picked these out, so I blame you for this.”

“Pretty sure you blame me for _everything_.”

Finally, their dad returns from the bathroom, and the photographic machine orders them to smile. Scott can tell Sara's forced smiles from her real ones, even when their dad can't, even when everyone else thinks they look real. She's not just pretending to like the sweater.

“I'm sure it's going to look great,” Scott says as Alec finishes paying and pulls out the pre-done Christmas cards. _Happy holidays from the Ryders'!_ it reads in a holiday themed font, and they're smiling and waving on the front. They don't look like they're heading to space anytime soon, they just look like a happy family.

(He keeps one of them. Someday, hundreds of years into the future, Scott will pull the Christmas card out of his belongings and try not to cry.)

* * *

He spins the dreidel and it lands on _nun_ , and he glances over at the pile of chocolate gelt Sara has next to her, neatly stacked and glittering in the kitchen light. “I saw you eat that.”

“No you didn't,” she says in a singsong voice, casually resting one elbow next to her pile. “But maybe if you spun something better than nothing you'd get to eat some too.”

“You gave me a loaded dreidel, didn't you.”

“I don't think those exist, but you keep telling yourself that. It's not my fault that I'm just naturally lucky!” Even though he's watching her, she pulls the wrapping off another piece of gelt and pops it into her mouth. She smiles, almost serenely, as if she's savoring the taste. Then she spins her dreidel, watches it fall on _shin_ , and places one back into the pot, knitting her eyebrows together in mock frustration.

He takes a drink of scotch and smiles when his dreidel stops, reaching a hand over to pull half to his small pile. “Hey, maybe I'm not unlucky after all.”

She reaches over and snatches one from him, laughing when he tries to grab it back. “Sister tax.”

“We're not done! You can't eat that!” he says, trying to swat at her, leaning over the table and almost spilling their drinks. She quickly unwraps it and... shoves it in his mouth. He almost gags but doesn't complain. It's chocolate, after all, who _would_ complain?

They're both laughing, and probably tipsy (Scott's _pretty_ sure the room's moving ever so slightly when he's sitting still), and they give up on playing and end up eating all of the chocolate (though Sara probably takes more of it than she lets on.)

He runs into their room to grab one of the presents he'd gotten for her – he's fifty percent certain it's this leather bracelet he saw at some store on the Citadel, but he really has no clue right now – and heads back into the small living room (the place they're renting is small, but it's near their cousins, so that's good enough.)

She picks it up and starts laughing even harder. “Did – did you get the _dog_ to wrap this?”

“Make fun of it all you want, but I _pride_ myself on my gift wrapping skills.”

She tears the wrapping off and opens the box and her laughter stops. “Wow. This is... _really_ pretty, Scott. Thank you.” She pulls something out of it, a rose gold (or maybe it's just gold, he can't tell) chain and a Star of David at the bottom. It's definitely not the leather bracelet, that's for sure – he'd meant to give that to her on Christmas, but he can't take it back now. But at least she's smiling, her eyes bright as she deftly clasps it behind her neck. “I don't... really have anything all that good to give you.”

“I _honestly_ expected you to say you were giving me the gift of your oh so wonderful company or something, so no worries.”

She snorts in laughter and grabs another piece of chocolate.


End file.
